Referenecs

When I reached a point where I understood my theme and knew roughly which techniques I wanted to experiment with, I looked for jewellers that I could learn techniques from. I learnt new ways to set enamels from Nora Kovats work. I also was inspired by Naomi James and Nic Bladen. James uses dried plants to roll mill texture on metal and Bladen casts organic objects in metal. Both jewellers are not doing harm to the environment as using part of a plant or a dead plant will not kill an entire eco-system. Besides looking at the surface of organic objects I am also interested in cellular growth.

Nervous Systems is a company that looks at cellular growth, but I cannot look to them for their techniques as they write their own computer programs to replicate nature. I admire them for their subject matter as they can't see it forming in nature with the naked eye so they recreate it digitally. Siobhan Doughty is a fine art student whose work I feel speaks to mine in terms of the subject matter. I also think that our work could work well in the same exhibition space.

I have not as yet found a jeweller that makes jewellery that combines casting, texturing metal and enamel most jewellers only stick to one technique but I want to make pieces that use different combinations of these techniques to make a cohesive body of work.